


you're just a daydream away (i wouldn't know what to say if i had you)

by guyi



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, alcohol mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 03:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9302567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guyi/pseuds/guyi
Summary: Mingyu is in love with Minghao.





	

**Author's Note:**

> my first seventeen fic! i'm decently proud of this one, having tried it from a totally different perspective than i'm used to, so if you like it, please give it lots of love! i promise that the title is misleading and this is not a sad fic at all i just liked how the title matched up with the plot.
> 
> also, in this fic junhui is a senior at their uni but still born in 1995 just in case any of u hardcore stans got confused. thanks!
> 
> [this is unedited as heck]

It starts out like this: Mingyu is a boy with a girlfriend and a group of friends he’s known since freshman year of college. Minghao is one of Mingyu’s friend’s friends who transferred to their college in junior year in search of something less like home. Korea seems like exactly the place to be.

They meet for the first time when Mingyu’s girlfriend is dragging him out to go to some movie and a boy and Mingyu’s friend are sitting on the sidewalk, licking the bottom of their ice cream cones to catch any runaway drips.

“Jun hyung?”

Mingyu can’t pronounce Junhui’s name to save his life, so he shortens it every time they speak.

Junhui squints his eyes as he looks up at them, facing the sun from his position on the pavement. Mingyu and his girlfriend’s faces are covered by a shadow.

“Mingyu? And Eunmi?” Junhui squints harder. The boy next to him turns to face them as well. 

“That’s us,” Eunmi smiles. She holds onto Mingyu’s arm a little bit tighter.

The other boy whispers into Junhui’s ear, a sticky hand against his skin. 

“Mingyu?” Junhui asks, pointing to him. He proceeds to say something in Mandarin and the boy nods, his mouth forming an ‘O’ of realization. 

“Who’s this, Jun hyung?” Mingyu asks. 

Junhui stands up, and the boy follows. The ice cream in his hand is melting over the edge of the cone in the heat of the South Korean September. There are drops of pink on the sidewalk below. “This is my friend, Xu Minghao. He just transferred here from China. We room together.”

“Nice to meet you,” Mingyu bows, and then he holds out his hand. 

Minghao shoots him a nervous and toothy smile and returns the actions. 

“He’s not very good at Korean yet,” Junhui chuckles. “I’ll have to translate for you.”

Minghao’s focus turns to the girl standing next to Mingyu, and they bow to each other. “Hello,” Minghao says in Korean. 

“Hello,” Eunmi replies. 

Mingyu is grinning the whole way to the movies, swinging his and his girlfriend’s hands in between them. 

“What’s got you so happy?” Eunmi asks, noticing his cheerful mood. “It can’t be me, since you’re never this happy when we get together.”

Mingyu pouts, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and pulling her in closely. She feels her head squish against his shoulder. “I am happy to see you.”

“Not this happy,” Eunmi comments. She smiles when Mingyu frowns again, trying to defend himself. 

“I like that kid,” Mingyu says. Eunmi knows who he’s talking about. “He seems really cool.”

“I hope he learns Korean soon enough, because I sure as hell know you’re not going to learn Mandarin,” Eunmi says. 

Mingyu laughs out loud at that, tilting his head back. “You know me so well, Eunmi.”

Eunmi shrugs. She sees the theatre across the street. “I know.”

 

The second time they see each other is when Junhui decides to have a welcome party for Minghao at the apartment he shares with Minghao and another boy named Jeon Wonwoo. Mingyu and Junhui’s shared collection of friends extends far past kids still in university, several of them having graduated though they still keep in touch. 

There’s a knock at the door to Mingyu’s dorm, and when Mingyu opens it, Eunmi comes face to face with a boy with half of his hair straightened and the other a wavy, voluminous mess. 

“Eunmi?” Mingyu asks. 

“No, Mingyu, it’s a burglar. I’m here to steal all of your kitchen supplies,” Eunmi jokes. 

Mingyu’s eyes widen as he fakes shock. “Not my silicone cupcake tray!”

Eunmi laughs at Mingyu’s response, and he lets her in. From where she’s seated on his couch, she can see the hair straightener resting on his desk, dangerously close to frying his notebook. Mingyu catches what she’s staring at, and quickly rushes back to finish his hair. 

“You look nice,” Mingyu tells her, sitting down and weaving the iron through his unstraightened hair. 

“Why are you getting all dolled up?” Eunmi asks in response. “It’s just Junhui.”

“It’s not Junhui I’m worried about,” Mingyu says. He can’t see her, but she crosses her arms. “It’s the other boy. God, I already forget his name.”

“It’s Xu Minghao,” Eunmi says. 

“Well, I’m trying to make a good first impression. I like him,” Mingyu says.

Eunmi huffs. “But you’ve already met. He knows you as Junhui’s friend who has a girlfriend.”

“But I want him to know more about me than that,” Mingyu whines, threading the iron through the last section of his hair so his entire head looks even. 

Eunmi gets up and walks towards him, putting a hand on the chair he’s sitting in. “That’s why we’re both going to this thing. Come on.”

Mingyu stands up, towering over her. She suddenly feels a lot less powerful. Mingyu always does this to her. 

 

When they reach Junhui’s apartment with a plastic box of shitty cookies Mingyu convinced Eunmi to buy on their way there, Minghao is sitting on the couch, as close to Junhui as possible, while Junhui talks with Wonwoo and another boy named Lee Seokmin. 

“Look,” Wonwoo announces when he sees them. “It’s one of the two couples our group of friends has.”

“Are you telling me Soonyoung hyung didn’t have the guts to ask out that senior like he told us?” Mingyu asks, storming in to get all of the details of Soonyoung’s unfulfilled escapades.

Wonwoo is sitting in the chair on Minghao’s left side, so Mingyu sits down right next to Minghao so he can listen to Wonwoo tell him all about why Soonyoung is still single. Minghao, next to him, is noticeably more uncomfortable with a near-stranger next to him, and it seems like Mingyu doesn’t realize who he’s sitting next to until after he shakes his head in response to Soonyoung. His girlfriend has walked over, unaccompanied, and is seated next to Seokmin making small talk.

It seems like Mingyu thinks Junhui is on his right, because he turns his head directly without thinking and says, “Jun hyung, is your friend here?” He sees who he’s looking at, and jumps. “Oh! Ming… Ming…” 

Mingyu, lost, makes eye contact with Eunmi from across the way and pleads for her to desperately help him out. She mouths his name to him.

“Minghao! Xu Minghao, right?” Mingyu asks.

Minghao nods. “Kim Mingyu-ssi?” He asks in shaky Korean.

Mingyu knows a bit of Mandarin thanks to Junhui’s random bouts of tutoring and his habit of talking like old buddies with the owners of all of the obscure Chinese restaurants they go to, so he tries to respond. “Correct,” he says in his best pronunciation, which could be considered an attempt at most.

Minghao smiles at Mingyu trying to speak his native language. “How are you?” He asks in textbook Korean, probably something Junhui taught him.

“I’m good. How about you?”

Their conversation seems so rehearsed that it could be an audio out of a Korean language curriculum, but Mingyu is a lot more encouraging than the robots that ask each other what their name is, smiling and clapping every time Minghao says something correctly. 

“Yah, Jun hyung,” Mingyu says, reaching a hand behind Minghao to smack Junhui’s shoulder. He stops his conversation with Eunmi and turns to Mingyu. “You’ve taught him well.”

“I’ve only taught him how to ask for directions to the bathroom,” Junhui laughs. “He takes Korean language classes. Pretty soon, he’ll be more educated than me.”

Over the course of the next thirty minutes, everyone missing shows up at Junhui’s door, greeting Minghao warmly as they see him. Seungkwan shows up with some tteokbokki to reportedly introduce Minghao to Korean food, to which Junhui informs him that they had tteokbokki yesterday. Jihoon, already beginning to dig into said tteokbokki, laughs at him.

There’s not enough space on the one couch and single lounge chair in the crowded apartment, so they begin dragging over chairs and sitting on the short wooden coffee table to all talk amongst themselves, the feet of the chairs dragging along the beaten up hardwood floor. Jisoo and Jeonghan are arguing about whether the spoon goes on the right or the left of the plate if the chopsticks are already on the right (Jisoo says right, but Jeonghan is insisting that it’s left), with the occasional interruption from Hansol, who tells them that the spoon comes with the soup and isn’t on the placemat beforehand. Wonwoo and Seokmin lay into Soonyoung about his failed confession when he shows up, around the same time that Seungcheol totally spills his soda all over his girlfriend Nayoung and their mutual friend, Jieqiong. The only freshman of the group, some kid named Chan who’s exactly the over-eager freshman they all once were, looks a bit lost but has absolutely no problem butting into other people’s conversations. Eunmi, on the opposite side of Mingyu, keeps an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t break the glass lamp behind him while engaging in some lighthearted conversation with Nayoung and Jieqiong as they clean up the mess on their laps.

Minghao says near to nothing to anyone other than Junhui, Jieqiong, and surprisingly, Mingyu, having made a quick friend with the boy.

Mingyu, noticing Minghao’s discomfort and anxiousness over speaking a foreign language, decides that instead of Mingyu teaching him how to reply to his rambunctious friends in broken Korean, he will learn some Chinese phrases. He knows the bare minimum: how to say hello, how to introduce himself, how to say please and thank you and goodbye and sorry, but he doesn’t know much beyond that.

As Minghao begins to teach him, Junhui sees them, and frowns. “I could have taught you that, Mingyu-yah,” he says. He wonders why Minghao is so special that he gets to be Mingyu’s designated Mandarin tutor.

With each hand gesture, incorrectly-pronounced Mandarin phrase about the weather, stuttered Korean word, and a whole lot of potato chips and tteokbokki, Mingyu and Minghao become closer.

 

A couple weeks later, Eunmi sneaks over to Mingyu’s dorm, and now they’re sitting on his bed, hardly paying attention to the movie playing on Mingyu’s beat up laptop in front of them. Mingyu smiles a lot more when he’s on his phone nowadays.

“Why’re you so happy? Watching cat videos?” Eunmi asks, in the midst of braiding her hair as she watches the girl and the boy on the screen break up. 

“Texting Minghao. He’s still getting used to the Korean keyboard, and it’s very amusing,” Mingyu says.

“You’ve been getting quite close with him, haven’t you?”

Mingyu sighs, shutting off his phone and letting it drop to his chest as he turns to her. In his voice, there is a tone Eunmi can’t pinpoint. “There’s just something about him that draws me in. He’s nothing like everyone else.”

 

Before Mingyu and Eunmi are boyfriend and girlfriend, they’re friends. They met through their mutual friend group in sophomore year, and really just completely hit it off. Eunmi is, first and foremost, Mingyu’s right-hand woman, or they wouldn’t even be a couple in the first place.

Eunmi feels like she’s looking into a reflection of the beginning of her relationship with Mingyu when she sees Xu Minghao. Though different in native languages, their personalities emulate each other’s. 

Eunmi is slouched on the bed opposite Mingyu’s in his dorm, intensely playing a videogame on her phone as Mingyu and Minghao are gathered on his bed with Mingyu reviewing verb forms with Minghao. 

Minghao seems to have the most trouble with these, since Mandarin has almost no conjugation whatsoever, so the concept doesn’t click as well. Every time Minghao makes a mistake, Mingyu smiles from his cheeks to his eyes, a smile even Eunmi doesn’t see very often, and tells him the correct answer.

“Your voice is so cute, Minghao,” Mingyu whispers to himself, but not quietly enough for Eunmi to avoid hearing him. She can’t help but get a little jealous. 

“What?” Minghao asks. 

“Nothing, nothing,” Mingyu says, shaking him off. Mingyu always does this, this shaking off his words because he doesn’t think they’re important when they really are. “Let’s work on the flash cards again.”

Sometimes, when Mingyu’s eyes are drifting off to look at something else, like the light on the wall or Eunmi across the room, Minghao will stare at Mingyu. Sometimes, when Mingyu doesn’t realize it, he’ll stare back. He doesn’t know what it means. 

 

In his own words, Junhui is absolute shit at Physics. He’s put off some of his required classes for a year too long, and now he’s stuck taking a freshman Physics class as a senior, and he hates it. Eunmi is good at physics, and is majoring in theoretical physics in university, so sometimes she will go over to his shared apartment to tutor him. 

Today, when she gets there, Minghao and Mingyu are on the couch, playing a video game on the beat-up television in front of them. Mingyu keeps shouting at Minghao to “Duck! Duck!” but Minghao doesn’t know what he’s saying, so he keeps making educated guesses and none of them seem to be what Mingyu wants. 

He pauses the game, leaving Minghao lost at instructions he doesn’t understand. “Eunmi?” Mingyu asks when she walks in. Eunmi turns her head at the sound of her name, surprised to see Mingyu here. 

“Mingyu? You told me you were going to help Soonyoung rehearse the lines he’s prepared for that senior,” Eunmi frowns. “Why would you lie to me?”

“I didn’t want you to think I was spending too much time with Minghao,” Mingyu says, walking up to her. He reaches out for her arm, crossed against her chest, and her expression loosens up at the touch.

“He’s my friend too, Mingyu. I don’t care who you spend your time with, I just want you to tell me. What if there was an emergency? I wouldn’t know where you would be,” Eunmi says, her eyebrows raised. This is not what their relationship once was. 

“I’ll tell you next time. I promise,” Mingyu says, looking into her eyes. “You know I don’t like stressing you out.”

Eunmi forces a laugh, smiling a little. “You always stress me out, you know that? What if you break something when I’m not there? Who will you have to bail you out?”

“You’re right, you always save my ass, even when I don’t realize it,” Mingyu says, shaking his head. 

“Hey, Minghao. How’s your Korean coming along?” Eunmi asks, waving to him. 

He nods his head and shrugs. “Hi Eunmi-ssi. It’s okay. Mingyu helps a lot.”

“I should hope so, even though I bet he’s a terrible teacher,” Eunmi jokes, prompting a melodramatic offended look from Mingyu. 

“He’s not that bad,” Minghao says, his eyes facing the ground. 

“Eunmi-yah!” Junhui interrupts, walking into view from the hallway. He’s got his laptop and a notebook pressed against his side. “Let’s get this shit over with.”

“Oh, Junhui. Always a true pleasure spending my time with you,” Eunmi sighs, and they sit down together at the table. It’s nearly November, and it still doesn’t look like Junhui has really grasped the correlation between velocity, angle, and acceleration, so that seems like the most beneficial place to begin. 

“I just don’t get it,” Junhui tells Eunmi. “It’s because I’m Chinese, you know. They’re discriminating against me,” he complains. 

“You’re fluent in Korean,” Eunmi scrunches up her nose. 

“Just pretend that that’s why I’m bad at physics, and not because I’m an idiot,” Junhui whispers, leaning into her ear. His head his turned at the perfect angle to catch a glimpse of Mingyu and Minghao on the couch. Mingyu’s laughing at something, maybe it’s the game, maybe it’s Minghao, but he’s clutching his stomach nonetheless. Minghao is watching him, smiling to himself. 

“Do you ever think maybe Minghao doesn’t want to be ‘just friends’ with Mingyu?” Junhui asks Eunmi. His voice is quiet enough for them to not hear his question. 

“What?” Eunmi asks, turning her head so she can see them too. 

Junhui thinks back to all of the times when Mingyu’s been over to hang out with Minghao. “Minghao’s vocabulary might be limited, but I see the way he looks at Mingyu. It’s the same way Mingyu looks at you.”

“At me?”

Mingyu and Eunmi never really figured out where to draw the line between friends and couple, so they act like a healthy mix of the two. It’s like they’re still friends, only with a different label attached. 

“Yeah, at you. Aren’t you two dating?” Junhui says sarcastically. “Really though, Minghao’s always liked him. Even from day one, when you guys met while we were eating ice cream. He’s really bad at hiding his feelings. I kind of feel bad for him, you know? Since Mingyu’s already dating you. He wouldn’t cheat on you, would he?”

Eunmi looks alarmed at the thought. “No!” She exclaims. “Mingyu would never do that. I trust him.”

For the next hour, Eunmi’s mouth might be trying to explain to Junhui how to calculate velocity from a word problem, but her mind is elsewhere, wondering if maybe the feelings Minghao has for Mingyu are mutual after all. 

 

Every time Mingyu speaks to Eunmi, he can’t help but talk about how much Minghao is improving in his Korean. He’s only been here for a few months at most, but his Korean has gotten dramatically better, nearly to the point where Minghao doesn’t have to think about what he wants to say before he says it. 

“Shame on you for dissing my teaching skills,” Mingyu says, poking Eunmi in the forehead as they’re walking around the city. It’s nearly Christmas now, and the both of them need to buy gifts for their family and friends. Christmas isn’t nearly as hyped up in Korea as it is in the west, but Jisoo and Hansol both have relatives from America, and they’ve convinced their entire friend group to do a Secret Santa. 

“Who do you have to buy a gift for?” Eunmi asks. 

“I’m not telling you!” Mingyu laughs. “What if you tell them?”

“I never tell your secrets,” Eunmi says, defending her. “I haven’t told a single person from the group about that time you thought that the children’s taekwondo center was a—”

“Okay, okay! I get it, you’re a trustworthy person and a really great girlfriend. But I’m still not telling you,” Mingyu says, before Eunmi can remind him of one of his most cringeworthy moments. It gives Mingyu shivers just thinking about it. 

“Is it me?” Eunmi asks, her eyebrows raised suggestively. Mingyu turns red, a telltale sign that she’s right, and Eunmi smiles to herself. 

“Fine, since you know I got you, who did you get?” Mingyu asks.

“Are you kidding? I’m not gonna tell you. We’re getting together at Hansol’s tomorrow, aren’t we? You’ll find out soon enough,” Eunmi says, making Mingyu pout. 

“That’s no fair!”

“I’ll tell you who I didn’t get, which is you, unfortunately. I would have gotten you one of those star-shaped popsicle makers,” Eunmi says, kicking at the grass under her feet. 

“Get me that for my birthday. It’ll be just in time for summer,” Mingyu tells her. “Who do you think Minghao got?”

“Why do you care?” Eunmi asks. 

“I’m just wondering. It’d be pretty funny if he got me, don’t you think? We’ve been friends for so long but I rarely tell him about the things I like since I spend so much time asking about him.”

“You know a lot about him, don’t you?” Eunmi asks. Their hands are interlocked but Eunmi doesn’t feel the same warmth as before. She faces forward with her head resting against Mingyu’s bicep. 

“I do. He’s really cool. Did you know he can dance? He’s a b-boy or something like that. I think that’s super cool. He’s also really funny, but not on purpose. And his voice is adorable, don’t you think?”

“It’s certainly very cute,” Eunmi agrees. 

“I like him a lot. He’s a really good friend of mine.”

“What about me?”

“You’re a really good girlfriend of mine,” Mingyu says, poking her on the nose. “But you’re also one of my best friends.”

Eunmi wonders if Mingyu ever thinks about the words he says. Maybe he does, and maybe he doesn’t, but as they walk around and point at expensive clothes in windows of expensive stores and talk about how much they would buy if they were filthy rich, she can’t stop thinking about Junhui’s words, and what they spell out in terms of her future. 

 

Jisoo and Hansol never do anything less than the most when they have their Christmas festivities at Hansol’s family home each year. This time is no different, and when Mingyu and Eunmi arrive together in some of the nicest clothes they have with their gifts under 20,000 won wrapped neatly in their hands, the entire house is lit up inside and out. 

Jisoo tells them it reminds him of when he was home in America with his family, the tree and the lights and the food and the Western holiday music. He says it’s his favorite part of the holidays, and that he’s thrilled to spend it with his closest friends. 

Mingyu and Eunmi are in typical early fashion, and the only people at Hansol’s are him, his parents, Jisoo, and Jeonghan. Hansol’s mom is unfortunately an exact replica of those white mothers that Eunmi and Mingyu watch on the TV sometimes, but it’s warm and inviting nonetheless as she greets them in botched Korean with a plateful of cookies. 

“This year will be a lot of fun, you know,” Jisoo tells them as he fixes a snowflake strand on the wall. Hansol’s home is basically Jisoo’s, at this point. “Since Minghao is here and all. The more the merrier.”

Mingyu instantly agrees, and the mention of Minghao’s name makes him explode into an excited rant about how much he’s improving in his Korean and whether or not Christmas is a big thing for him and his family, and who he got for the Secret Santa. Eunmi feels a bit awkward still attached to his side as Mingyu rambles on about someone that’s not her, so she lets go of his arm in lieu to talk with Hansol in the kitchen as he fixes up a roasted Christmas chicken, something that she is constantly thanking his American mom for. 

“Mingyu’s really going off about Minghao hyung, isn’t he?” Hansol asks, stretching up to get a plate that he can’t reach when his father hands it to him. 

“Yeah, Minghao’s all the boy can think about these days,” Eunmi says, a little bit bitter. She doesn’t mean to be. 

Hansol nudges her. “You’re not jealous, are you?”

Truth be told, she kind of is. It’s a little bit disheartening when a boy Mingyu’s known for a few months makes his eyes light up faster than the girlfriend he’s known for three years, and Eunmi doesn’t like that feeling. Maybe she’s looking too much into it, but Junhui’s already basically confirmed to her that Minghao likes Mingyu, so what’s not to prevent him from liking him back? The answer: her.

“No,” Eunmi fibs, setting out some plates. “Why would I need to be?” 

 

Receiving gifts is nearly as good as giving them. Gathered around the fake fireplace in Hansol’s home, the entire group makes the executive decision to begin with the oldest first and work their way around from there, with Hansol’s mother dropping in periodically to offer drinks or a nice homemade snack. 

Eunmi unwillingly elects for her fear to get the better of her, and instead of enjoying the time with her friends, she surreptitiously stares Minghao down. Halfway through, she determines that Minghao is not nearly as obvious as Junhui said he was, but she does not miss the way he will subtly glance at Mingyu with fondness in his eyes when Mingyu laughs at some sort of inside joke of a gift.

She’s in a bit of a trance, really, and is only knocked out of it when Nayoung literally knocks her in the shoulder with her gift.

“Eunmi-yah!” Nayoung shouts, causing everyone to laugh. “You have to go. We ended up in a circle again.”

“Me?” Eunmi asks, pointing to herself. “Alright.”

Eunmi had Junhui, and got him a small basket full of trinkets all related to physics, just to get a laugh out of him. Junhui had Nayoung who had Seungcheol who had Jieqiong who had Minghao, and Eunmi stops paying attention until Minghao gets up to give his gift.

People say that the universe works in mysterious ways, but the chances that the universe has your entire life story already planned out are much higher. Eunmi doesn’t know what she was expecting when Minghao quickly presses a small box with a bow on it in Mingyu’s hands before scurrying back, his cheeks red.

Mingyu looks thrilled, and his mouth is in a wide smile when he looks up at Eunmi as if to say  _ See? Isn’t it funny how he had me? _ Eunmi grits her teeth and smiles back, shooting him a thumbs up as he begins to open it.

A metal bracelet, likely costing much more than the agreed budget, waits amongst the tissue paper for him. The Christmas lights reflect off of it, and Mingyu sits in front of the fire in awe. He is dumbstruck.

“As a thanks for your help with Korean,” Minghao tells him, and Mingyu beams.

“You know I’m always here to help,” Mingyu says back, and he rushes over as he haphazardly shoves the bracelet onto his wrist to give Minghao a hug. It’s an awkward one, where Mingyu is a giant and Minghao is sitting down on the carpet but it’s grateful nonetheless. Maybe the bracelet wasn’t just a sign of thanks, but also a sign of love.

Mingyu has Eunmi, and Eunmi, despite her constant nagging, has been unable to get Mingyu to reveal his gift for her. 

It’s a necklace, a handmade one Mingyu must have gotten from a street vendor who clearly spent a lot of effort into making it. 

“Mingyu, this is beautiful!” Eunmi exclaims, admiring it the way Mingyu did his bracelet.

“Like you,” Mingyu grins, and Eunmi leans over to give him a kiss on the cheek. The spot where her lips touch doesn’t turn red like it used to. The night goes on, and Minghao slips to the back of her mind.

 

Every year someone in their group invites the rest of them over for drinks, drinks, celebration, and more drinks on New Year’s Eve. It is, admittedly, not very responsible of them, but there’s no point in going to university if you don’t plan to get piss drunk with your favorite people at least once. Plus, it makes for a lot of good blackmail material.

Seungcheol and Nayoung have taken up the job of shared hosts this time, but there’s really not much more that they need to do besides buy a shit ton of beer and soju and turn on the television. It’s basically a house party of epic proportions with significantly fewer people than the standard.

Despite popular belief, Mingyu and Eunmi actually don’t do every single thing together, and Mingyu is getting himself ready over at (you guessed it) Junhui’s, with Minghao and Wonwoo. He is asking them which bow tie goes with the over-the-top dress shirt he’s wearing, and if he should wear nice shoes when they’ll probably end up with vomit on them by the end of the night. Minghao, as per usual, has bottled up his feelings like a fine wine, but it’s unclear as to how long he’ll let them age for.

Eunmi and Jieqiong share dorms, which is how they met in the first place, and they are getting ready themselves, for the last party of the year before they can begin again.

In all honestly, Mingyu is the reason than he and Eunmi are consistently early to everything, and without him, Eunmi finds herself back to her chronically late ways, especially with Jieqiong by her side. They take tons of selcas in the dim light of their dorm and post every single one, eager to remember this night. 

The celebration is already as full swing as it can get when they arrive. Jihoon and his tiny self is a bit of a lightweight, so he’s already noticeably more drunk than the rest of them, his words bumping into each other as he trips around the room, giggling. Even buzzed Jisoo and Jeonghan are still arguing about something just as irrelevant as The Great Spoon Debate, shouting at each other over the music as they bounce to the beat. Chan is doing the same thing he always does when someone brings alcohol into the equation, which is resisting it until he eventually caves in and inevitably goes overboard. Seungkwan and Seokmin are going at it with the karaoke along to the music, when there isn’t even a machine. Soonyoung, red in the face and a hazy look in his eyes, tries to schmooze over Nayoung, only to be gently let down with a fond laugh as Seungcheol storms over, ready to tell Soonyoung that just because he can’t get one senior doesn’t mean he needs to try with his girlfriend. Junhui, the classic emotional drunk, is on the verge of tears while talking to Hansol about his terrible Physics class as Hansol consoles him with a sympathetic pat on the back every now and then. Wonwoo, the only one of them with an ounce of responsibility, stays back and stays sober in order to prevent anything unwanted. Jieqiong is always particularly excited about get-togethers that involve alcohol, so she cheers as she hands Eunmi a cup and downs her entire beer in a single sip. Mingyu and Minghao are talking in a corner with blue solo cups in their hands, their words lost both in translation and in the sheer volume of the place.

Eunmi doesn’t want to interrupt Mingyu and Minghao’s conversation, but she does want to say hello to him. She begins walking towards him, only to be grabbed by the wrist by Jieqiong and dragged over to Nayoung, Seungcheol, and Soonyoung. On her way, she catches Mingyu’s eye, and he waves to her. She grins back, all her teeth in view. 

Drunk Seungcheol is even more of a parent than sober Seungcheol, and when they approach, he is reprimanding and lecturing Soonyoung like a legitimate father in order to keep him away from his girlfriend.

“It’s okay,” Nayoung tells him over and over, rubbing a soothing arm on his shoulder. Seungcheol still looks like he has steam coming out of his ears, but his girlfriend’s touch seems to calm him down.

“You guys are so cute, you know,” Jieqiong exclaims. Her cheeks are bright red. “Relationship goals.”

Nayoung beams and gives Seungcheol a quick kiss, something that completely distracts from Soonyoung in front of him as he smiles back at her, true admiration in his eyes.

The rest of the night is spent mingling amongst themselves as they normally do, until Jieqiong gets a little too excited and is about to throw up when Eunmi and Nayoung notice her from across the room. There’s only three minutes until the new year.

The two girls rush over as quickly as they can, sensing danger, and pull Jieqiong into the bathroom across the hallway and over the toilet just in time for her to vomit.

_ Two _ .

They sit there as she lets it out, coughing a little as they pat her back soothingly. Jieqiong’s always been a bit of a lightweight as well.

“She never expects to get super drunk until she does,” Eunmi laughs.

“It’s Seungcheol. He’s rubbing off on her,” Nayoung jokes back.

Jieqiong sits back up, wiping the spit on her chin with her sleeve. “Thanks, guys. Wouldn’t know what I’d do if I hurled all over your floor.”

“No biggie. We’ve found much grosser floor stains in this apartment in our bedroom,” Nayoung says.

“Ew!” Eunmi comments, scrunching up her nose and frowning.

_ One .  _

Nayoung swears. “Fuck, I told Seungcheol we’d have a New Year’s Kiss this year since he was back home last year. Gotta run.”

She gets up and speeds out of the bathroom. Eunmi supposes that maybe she and Mingyu can have one too, but Jieqiong is still a little bit dazed, so they get up from the tiled floor slowly, Eunmi rubbing Jieqiong’s back a final time. 

“Are you gonna have a kiss with Mingyu oppa?” Jieqiong asks.

“I hope so,” Eunmi replies as they walk out.

_ Happy New Year. _

They’re not in time for Eunmi to get in her kiss, but she doesn’t need to. 

Right there, on the couch as everyone around them welcomes in the New Year with cheers and whistles, are Minghao and Mingyu kissing.

Mingyu’s eyes are closed, like the first time he and Eunmi ever kissed. Minghao has a hold on his chin, tilting Mingyu’s head up as their lips fit together perfectly, almost so perfectly that even Eunmi thinks to applaud them. 

This is no mistake. This is no accidental pressing of the lips due to a compromising situation. This is real, and exactly what both of them want. Eunmi remembers reading something (though it was on the Internet, so the credibility is questionable) that said that anything you do when you’re drunk is just what you’re too scared to do sober. And now, she stands in Nayoung and Seungcheol’s apartment like the entire world has disappeared and she is watching her boyfriend and her best friend kiss another person that’s not her. And she’s not angry.

There’s no right way to go about this. She sees them part lips and press their foreheads together, breathing heavily. She sees them smile hazily at each other, grins warm and drunk. She sees them, her boyfriend and one of his closest friends, instead of her in his place.

It doesn’t look like anyone else has noticed the kiss yet, likely too busy welcoming in the new year. But soon the excitement dies down, and there’s no mistaking the mess of Mingyu and Minghao next to each other on the couch. And there’s no mistaking the wistful look in Eunmi’s eyes, watching them from across the room.

All eyes on her, now.

“Eunmi,” Mingyu says, getting up to explain. There’s no need.

“Don’t,” Eunmi stops him. “I should have seen it coming sooner.”

Minghao stands up now too, looking incredibly guilty. He puts a hand on Mingyu’s shoulder before he’s aware of what he’s doing, and when he realizes, he immediately takes his hand away. This is not the new year Eunmi wanted, but she thinks that the definite loss of her relationship with Mingyu right when the clock strikes 12 might mean something.

“Eunmi-ssi, I didn’t mean it,” Minghao says, and Eunmi watches Mingyu’s heart break all over again as the words leave his mouth.

Nayoung comes up behind her and puts a comforting hand on her arm. Eunmi sighs. “Don’t lie to me, Minghao. I know you meant it, or I wouldn’t be so calm right now.”

“You know that we’re still dating,” Mingyu says, leaving Minghao’s side to pull Eunmi’s hands in his. “You know I love you.”

Eunmi smiles. She can see the necklace she got merely days earlier on her chest. “I know you loved me.”

“Loved?”

“Ooh!” 

Junhui hisses a ‘shh’ at Jeonghan, who looks like he’s watching the best drama of all time, his mouth open wide in anticipation.

“Loved,” Eunmi confirms. “But you don’t anymore, and I think I have to accept that.”

“Eunmi-”

“Want me to drop you home?” Nayoung asks, turning to Eunmi and taking her attention away from the pitiful boy in front of her. 

Eunmi nods. There are no tears in her eyes, and Eunmi thinks that this conversation is the beginning of the right path. 

 

“Mingyu wants me to tell you that he’s sorry,” Jieqiong says, arriving back to the dorm nearly two hours after Eunmi got there.

“Mingyu also wants to tell me that that kiss meant nothing, when it certainly did,” Eunmi mutters from her bed, a pillow covering her face.

“Did you know that Minghao liked him?” Jieqiong sits down in the bed opposite Eunmi’s, her face still a little bit tinged from that night. 

Eunmi hums, pulling the pillow off of her head. “I knew Mingyu liked Minghao, too.” 

 

Mingyu is at their door the next morning. He’s there, with a bouquet of Eunmi’s favorite flowers and a bar of her favorite chocolate, there to apologize and explain himself and ask for forgiveness. Eunmi knows he’s there, too, ready to lie to her face about the circumstances of last night.

“Don’t tell him I’m here,” Eunmi whispers to Jieqiong, scanning the room for a place to hide.

“Where are you gonna hide?” Jieqiong asks as Mingyu knocks on the door again, shouting Eunmi’s name.

“I don’t know, in my closet? Quick, answer the door before Mingyu starts getting annoying,” Eunmi orders, jumping amongst her clothes and shutting the door.

Jieqiong opens the door, and sure enough, Mingyu is there, bouquet in hand with a desperately apologetic look on his face.

“Is Eunmi here?” He asks.

Jieqiong hesitates. She’s never been the best liar. “Uh, no? She went out for a run… uh… about fifteen minutes ago.”

“Really? Eunmi never gets up early,” Mingyu frowns. He sees right through her. Eunmi smacks her head. 

“Yeah, um, last night was a bit much for her. Come back later!” 

Jieqiong shuts the door before Mingyu has a chance to challenge her statement, locking it and leaving him stranded.

Eunmi emerges from the closet, a sock on her shoulder. “You’re such a shitty liar.”

“I know, don’t trust me with these things. I’ll totally blow your cover,” Jieqiong pouts. 

“It’s fine. Shutting the door was the best option,” Eunmi collapses on her bed, her hair spreading out onto the sheets.

“Do you not want to talk to him?”

Eunmi sighs. More than anything, she refuses to listen to Mingyu’s insistence that what happened between Minghao and him last night doesn’t matter, because the story isn’t about her anymore. It’s about them.

 

It’s understandable that Mingyu wouldn’t buy Jieqiong’s tall tale because half an hour later, when Jieqiong is at class and Eunmi is still at the dorm, he knocks on the door again.

Eunmi doesn’t try to avoid him this time. 

“Eunmi,” Mingyu begins the second she opens the door. “Please, let me explain.”

“You have two minutes to tell me as many lies about last night as you can,” Eunmi says. “Go.”

“Lies?”

Eunmi rolls her eyes. “Please explain to me the circumstances of last night.”

And off he goes, Mingyu does, his words tripping into each other. “I don’t know, I just. Minghao just kissed me when it hit midnight? And you weren’t in view and I kissed back because I wasn’t going to just sit there frozen, you know? But I didn’t mean to kiss back. It doesn’t matter. It didn’t mean anything, I swear. It was just… a mistake. I don’t know what I was doing that night. Maybe I was a little bit too drunk. I don’t… I don’t think Minghao likes me like that. And I’m sorry for upsetting you. I understand if you want to break up but you mean a lot to me, Eunmi. More than he does. We’ve been best friends for years and you’re the best girlfriend I’ve ever had, because you keep things real and you still act like my friend. And I love you. You know that I love you, right?”

Eunmi hums. “Eight lies in a single, long-winded apology. Very impressive, Mingyu.”

“I’m not lying to you, Eunmi. I brought you some really nice smelling flowers and your favorite candy just in case this apology isn’t enough,” Mingyu says, holding them out for her.

Eunmi takes them gladly. Just because she has no intention of getting back together with him after their unofficial official breakup doesn’t mean she won’t accept free things when offered them. She loves that candy bar.

“Thanks, Mingyu. I appreciate you thinking of me. Do you really think I want to keep dating you, though?” Eunmi asks, eyebrows raised.

Mingyu huffs. It’s the question he’s been trying to avoid, because everything in his life is so certain when Eunmi is around. She is his girlfriend and his best friend. She makes the best fashion decisions for him and prevents him from becoming a hermit in the darkness of his dorm as he carries out the classes to match his major. Her company is inviting and her smile is warm and welcoming, and it feels like home to him. She keeps him grounded. When he’s with Eunmi, he’s Mingyu with the girlfriend who’s way out of his league and Mingyu with the group of friends who he wouldn’t give up for anything and Mingyu with a steady major and good grades and Mingyu with an organized life but now it all seems like it’s crashing down around him. 

“No,” Mingyu admits.

“Why?” Eunmi asks, and this is the question she really wants the answer to. Why does Mingyu think she’s incredibly distraught over the kiss when she’s shown no evidence of that?

“Aren’t you angry I cheated on you?”

Eunmi nods. She is, but that’s not the reason why she doesn’t want to get back together. In hindsight, she should have seen it coming. “But?”

“But?” Mingyu asks. “There’s another reason?”

Mingyu’s always been smart in an academic sense, but right now, Eunmi doesn’t think he could be any denser. “What if I told you Minghao’s liked you ever since he laid eyes on you. What would you say then?”

“ _ What _ ?” Mingyu’s eyes widen.

“You’re very observative, you know that, Mingyu?” Eunmi quips. “It’s a shame you didn’t know, because then I suppose you would have noticed your own growing affection for him a lot sooner.”

“You know I don’t like him like that,” Mingyu says, a hand on her arm.

“You  _ think _ I know you don’t like him like that. Junhui first pointed it out to me. He noticed that Minghao liked you, and I started to notice that you liked him back. You don’t need to be ashamed of it. You know we don’t care what your sexual orientation is,” Eunmi says.

“Are we through?” Mingyu asks.

“I think we were through the moment Minghao walked into your life and took up a permanent residence in your heart.”

Mingyu looks defeated. “So do we stay friends? I get it if you don’t want to.”

Eunmi opens her candy bar and breaks off a bit, handing it back to Mingyu. It’s his favorite type, too. “We’ve always been friends. Something like this shouldn’t change that.”

“So now what?” Mingyu bites into his piece. 

Eunmi bites into her own. “Now you go and explain your feelings to Minghao. Poor kid must be confused out of his mind.”

It seems like a solid idea to Mingyu, who nods firmly in response to Eunmi’s order. He made this mess, and now he’s in the process of cleaning it all up, brick by brick. Continuing to break pieces off of the slab of chocolate Eunmi gave him, he turns around, headed towards Junhui’s apartment. 

“And Mingyu?” Eunmi calls down the hallway. He stops in his tracks and turns around on the balls of his feet. “Don’t lie to him.”

 

Mingyu and Minghao make up eventually. He shows up at Minghao’s door completely empty-handed, but he doesn’t need fancy chocolate or a dozen roses in order to tell him what he wants. He only needs Eunmi’s sage guidance, as his best friend, in order to tell Minghao that the kiss was, in fact, totally legit. It’s a little bit hazy, what happens after.

Over the course of the next few weeks, their friends get closer, carefully treading the waters as they bounce around the topic of that fated New Year’s Eve, until Eunmi can’t take it anymore and tells them to stop avoiding it like the plague. She was over it after a good twenty minute cry in her dorm room right after getting back from the party, and Mingyu and Minghao are perfectly happy.

“We just don’t want to bring up a sore topic,” Hansol tries explaining to her as they’re all hanging out at a Korean barbeque place. “What if you start crying?”

Mingyu is on her right and Nayoung is on her left. “I already did that. We’re still friends, you know,” Eunmi says, grabbing Mingyu’s hand and holding it up for everyone to see. When they touch, there are no sparks and Eunmi’s heart doesn’t skip a beat. Time and acceptance has healed her. She even makes a show of shooting a finger gun towards Minghao, who does it back to her.

“Soonyoung hyung finally got around to talking to that senior he’s been pining over,” Seungkwan informs everyone, making them all turn their attention to Soonyoung, who is bright red as he shuts his phone off, very obviously having just been texting said senior.

“Really?” Nayoung asks. “Guess we’ll have to invite her into the group.”

“You lose one couple and you gain two more,” Seokmin says right before throwing a piece of beef across the table in an attempt to get Jisoo to catch it with his mouth. He doesn’t, so now there’s a streak of sauce on his collarbone. Jeonghan, next to him, leans over with a damp napkin to wipe it.

“It seems like a fair bargain to me,” Eunmi says. “As long as everyone’s happy.”

“Well?” Jihoon asks, motioning his chopsticks towards Mingyu and Minghao. They’re trying to do the same thing as Seokmin and Jisoo. “Are you happy?”

The piece of meat Mingyu throws in the air Minghao catches in his mouth. They cheer.

 

Mingyu learns a lot of things. He learns that just because something’s been the same for a while doesn’t mean it always has to be. He learns that he doesn’t need to lie to other people in order to preserve his own reputation, because he’s totally transparent anyway. And he learns that sometimes, things happen for a reason.

Eunmi is the best choice he’s ever made. She’s been with him through thick and thin and even that damn kiss debacle because like him, their platonic relationship means more to her than their romantic one. Everyday Mingyu will text Eunmi about something trivial, and Eunmi will respond with an equally unimportant statement of her own. Eunmi is what lead Mingyu to ever own up to his feelings towards Minghao. He will not forget the love they once shared, but it’s different this time.

Because Minghao is there in front of him this time, and he can’t make good fashion choices for shit but he cooks well when Mingyu helps him out and he’s a part of the group of friends that Mingyu wouldn’t trade for anything else and his touch makes Mingyu’s skin tingle and his lips are warm and inviting and his voice makes Mingyu’s heart melt every time he opens his mouth and maybe things are different but Minghao grounds Mingyu in a way that Eunmi didn’t and it doesn’t feel exactly the same but Mingyu doesn’t want it to. 

It ends like this: Junhui invites Eunmi out to go get some coffee together and work on Physics at the café, where the ambient sounds of nothingness will help them stay focused and productive. As they leave the campus, there are two boys sitting on the sidewalk eating ice cream, licking the pink drops dripping down the sides of their cones. They take the sticky liquid and wipe it on each other’s noses, and then they kiss.

 

+++

 

“Eunmi!”

Eunmi turns around from her computer to see her flatmate bust through her bedroom door.

“Yoonseo?” 

“Yeah, me. How’s your thing coming along for the company’s short story contest?” Yoonseo asks, flopping down on Eunmi’s bed. 

“It’s good. I think I finished the rough draft,” Eunmi tells her.

“Really? What’s it about?” 

Eunmi chuckles, reminiscing. “It’s about my dumbass friends from university.”

“Can I read it? I’m not a very good judge, though,” Yoonseo says, sitting up and eyeing Eunmi’s laptop.

She hands it over willingly. “Sure.” Eunmi smiles. There’s a necklace around her neck that she’s kept for nearly four years.

**Author's Note:**

> please give me some feedback in the comments it would be much appreciated !!! also find me on tumblr [@chineseidols](http://chineseidols.tumblr.com) !


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